Agostino Scilla's acclaimed work on marine fossils, complete with 31 plates

Third Latin edition of a groundbreaking work by celebrated Italian Baroque painter and paleontologist Agostino Scilla (1629-1700), who pioneered the scientific study of fossils.

It was first published in 1670 in Italian as La vana speculazione disingannata dal senso (Vain Speculation Undeceived by Sense). Scilla argued that fossils were once living creatures, opposing the popular believe that they were of supernatural origin. His work played a central role in a British debate about the formation of fossils after British naturalist had rediscovered the work in the 1690's.

Scilla collaborated with Pietro Santi Bartoli (1635-1700), an engraver renowned for his illustrations of Roman antiquities. Together they produced some of the earliest accurate depictions of fossils, which would greatly impress naturalists such as John Ray and John Woodward. Scilla's important fossil collection was, interestingly, acquired by John Woodward in 1717 and is now held at the Sedgewick Museum of Earth Sciences in Cambridge.